Air turbine starters are known in the aviation field, and are commonly used to start propulsion turbine engines of modern aircraft. A starter typically includes a clutch that overruns when the turbine engine achieves a certain operating speed. Such overrunning can occur continuously during operation of the turbine engine. In some instances, if problems with the clutch occur, the clutch may transmit reverse torque and backdrive the air turbine starter. To prevent undesirable backdriving of the starter by the turbine engine, a decoupler device is conventionally provided in the power train between the starter and turbine engine.
Unfortunately, a conventional decoupler device may suffer from one or more shortcomings. The conventional decoupler device may be overly large or complex in its construction, can provide a possible source of malfunction or breakdown, may undesirably reset automatically to a torque transmitting condition after it is tripped by a reverse torque, and/or may require extensive time consuming disassembly to reset after being tripped by a reverse torque incident. Moreover, portions of the decoupler device may wear and overheat the starter during a decoupled condition. Overheating of the starter may result in the decoupler device failing to prevent backdriving of the starter.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide improved decoupler devices for use with air turbine starters. Additionally, it is desirable to provide decoupler devices that reduce wear between the decoupler device and other portions of the starter. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description of the invention and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background of the invention.